The invention pertains to a process and arrangement for automatically cleaning the interior surfaces of a gun barrel.
An arrangement for removing residues and sediments from the interior surfaces of gun barrels (hereinafter referred to as cleaning device) has been described in the copending and co-assigned application Ser. No. 074,040, filed Sept. 10, 1979 (now U.S. Pat. No. 4,290,163). In the cleaning device described in the copending application the forwardly and rearwardly arranged brushes rotate in opposite directions. In this way the frictional torques which occur inside the gun barrel compensate each other and there is not formed an overall resulting torque on the cleaning device, which could impart an undesirable rotation about its longitudinal axis as it advances along the bore axis of the gun barrel. The afore-described automatic cleaning device, can for example, in a gun barrel of 120 mm caliber, replace a brush arranged on a six meter long rod which requires to be serviced by no less than 7 persons.
In the afore-described cleaning device of copending application Ser. No. 074,040 (now U.S. Pat. No. 4,290,163) it has been proven disadvantageous that the complete introduction of the cleaning device into the gun barrel to be cleaned can only be carried out with the application of considerable pressure in the longitudinal direction, whereby the cleaning device itself can be damaged. A complete introduction of the cleaning device is, however, necessary in order to avoid an undesirable rotation of the cleaning device about its longitudinal axis.